In highly competitive mass merchandising of products, particularly at the retail level, there is an ever more pressing need to optimize merchandising efficiency.
In the case of certain liquid products, (such as for example automobile windshield washer anti-freeze, oil and the like, or comestibles such as milk), that are retailed in relatively large volumes in consumer-sized packaging through a retail outlet, storage, logistics and retail space problems tend to increase a retailers operating costs.
An alternative approach to merchandising such goods is to provide in-store dispensing of such liquids from a bulk supply thereof. Manual dispensing must be carried out either by the purchaser or by retail store personnel. Customer service conscious retailers do not tend to view dispensing by the purchaser as a particularly attractive form of retailing. Health, safety, portion control and other considerations may also adversely relate to this approach to dispensing products. Retail store personnel are not generally cost effective when employed in the role of dispenser operators.
Accordingly, even though considerable savings and possibly other benefits might accrue to a retailer through its securing a bulk supply of a product to be dispensed in consumer-sized retail quantities in the retail outlet, the additional cost, complexity and other liabilities of this approach to dispensing such goods generally makes its adoption commercially untenable.
Vending machine technologies for automating the dispensing of products provides a partial solution to some of the problems facing retailers of the products in question, but in general are not readily adaptable to a wide range of products and do not provide the benefits of on site dispensing of bulk products.
One machine which is intended to secure at least some of the benefits sought through automated bulk dispensing of flowable, and especially liquid, products, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,815,256.
One of the difficulties in implementing the above mentioned technologies lies in ensuring that containers used therein are properly oriented during the various automated handling, etc, thereof. The difficultly lies in arranging for the necessary alignment, one aspect of which is related to appropriate radial alignment. This is of particular importance in the handling of containers which are either physically or functionally asymmetrical.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,120,134 discloses an apparatus for filling flexible containers which are fed to the apparatus as a continuous web arranged in such a way as to provide for predetermined alignment of succeeding containers at a filling station. The respective neck portions of the containers support annular rings which are adapted to be received between the mutually opposed edges of two inwardly extending flanges of a gripping device having an opening with a complimentary profile. The gripping device then receives the annular ring supporting portion of the containers neck, and mechanically orients the opening in the neck with a filler spout on the apparatus.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,242,951 discloses a web-feeding filler apparatus filler head, adapted to receive a specially shaped cap secured to the neck of the container to be filled. Peripheral edges of the cap a cut away, so as to engage in a plowing relationship with shaped portions of the filling head. This arrangement is intended to orient the container in a predetermined relation to the filling head during the filling process, but requires that a particular cap shape be employed, which is both relatively costly and limiting from a marketing point of view.